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Two of my biggest gripes with the peer-review process would be relatively easy to address: 1. Time 2. One-way communication 1. You sometimes have to waste a
by beloch 13y ago
Two of my biggest gripes with the peer-review process would be relatively easy to address:
1. Time
2. One-way communication
1. You sometimes have to waste a lot of time to get articles published. The way the current process works, it is very easy for referees who are either competitors, incompetent, or simply assholes to effectively filibuster the review process. Even when things go smoothly the process is often agonizingly slow.
2. The peer-review process operates under the obsolete limitation of snail-mail correspondence. There is no two-way communication between the referees. Referees often return either unprofessional or obviously wrong (to everyone but the editor!) comments. If the referees could talk to each other this would be sorted out quickly. It doesn't help that editors are typically very reluctant to reconsider rejection verdicts even when they are based on clear cases of referee error.
How would I address this? Use the #$%@!ing internet people! Journals should abandon this one-way snail-mail process and build a private message board for each paper being reviewed. Referees are invited to post their comments anonymously on the forum. Other referees and, ideally, the authors could then reply to those comments. After a reasonable time period has elapsed, perhaps a couple of weeks, the editor should take stock of what valid concerns remain and reach a verdict.
- leephillips 13y agoSnail mail? I haven't seen this as part of the reviewing process in decades. What field and country are you talking about?
- beloch 13y agoThey use email, but I meant that the process hasn't really adapted to take advantage newer technology than snail-mail.
- kenko 13y agoHow so? The one time I was a referee I got the paper by downloading a PDF and sent in my comments by entering them into a form. That technology is newer than snail mail.
- lliiffee 13y agoThere are lots of things you might consider, that would be impossible with snail mail. For example, the reviewers might be able to send regular emails with questions to the authors, or the authors might be able to constantly update the paper in response to initial reviewer comments, there could be an anonymous "chat room" of some kind, etc. Not sure if any of these are good ideas, but I think it is a fair point that most journals simply use the internet as a "faster snail mail". That said, I review for conferences that are taking advantage of the internet, with author response to reviewer comments, discussions among the reviewers, etc.
- kenko 13y agoRegular emails with questions would certainly be possible with snail mail. But the fundamental problem with all of those suggestions is that only reviewers who really wanted to take a lot of time and care with reviewing would take advantage of them, and since there number of reviewers like that is vanishingly small, it wouldn't be worth the effort to establish the necessary systems.
- lliiffee 13y agoI totally agree-- the problem with reviews isn't technological. Reviewers fundamentally need better incentives to do a good job, which I'm not sure how to do.